Monday, April 30, 2007

Floateria

Many a times I have felt that the safest and belonged of all places is the bath. When I was a child I remember, I used to look at the huge mirror at the wall opposite to the shower, and perform many an enthralling performances from movies, or just imitate the Holy Cross High schoolbus driver or play imaginary games with imaginary elves with pointed ears. Enid Blyton fan that I was.

As time flew by, Oscar-winning performances turned into Grammy's! I was singing aloud. Now I was doing that on a professional level under the shower. Steven Tyler, Eddie Vedder, James Hetfield, Axl Rose, Sebastian Bach, titillated an imaginary audience with their great voices and air guitars. Sometimes mom used to give a stern rap at the bathroom door and warn me that I have been inside for almost more than half an hour. There used to be water all around. On the ceiling, on the mirror, on the magazine rack...everywhere! That was because of my vigourously gyrating 'stage antics'.

With passage of time, as I went deeper into real performances at colleges and pubs, and getting deeper into extreme metal, I was into 360 deg. headbanging. Meaning, the head full of hair and all, is supposed to be swirled round and round like a man possessed by the devil himself! That proved a little risky sometimes because of disorientation. The slippery soapy tiles beneath you are treacherous. I have fallen down on my butt and other places, many a times thrown to some corner, swung around by imaginary moshing fans and even bodysurfed my way to the shower faucet in order to stop the deluge. I had numerous blacks and blues on me along with crinkled skin on my fingers by the time I stepped out of the steaming bathroom.

Definitely this is not a solitary experience. I am sure many of us still have a lot of pending performances yet, maybe your best is still to come. However, I have had my share of the shower(lime)light. I mean most of my tile breaking performances are lost in the steam of the geyser. Sometimes Still when I look at me at the mirror, the reflection in retrospect questions. The face I look at is dissatisfied, not being able to perform anymore. It is weatherbeaten and old making the best of basking in some past glory. Purpose, job, relations, self, questions, posts, faces, meanings, , , ..... all whiz my head. Million thoughts passing in the mind in one millionth of a second. Like slices of melon being squashed in the blender.

Performances gone, though I yearn for those days. Nevertheless, the shower still gives me the freedom and inertness from the outside. You become one with the crystalline elemental water. As water flows from the scruff of the neck and downwards. Gone are the efforts to feel weightlessness. Breathing is more lucid. The lump in your heart and throat is gone.

It is next to the brief stay which I had in the womb. It is my own floateria, my isolation room.